Insurrection
by Millennium Slinky
Summary: The Black Fang years before Sonia's arrival was quite different: a small group of individuals devoted to bringing about justice in their own way. First chapter: Introduction to Brendan, Jan, Uhai, Legault, Lloyd, and Linus. SPOILERS.


(Legault needed more stories. Therefore he got one. So...what you might want to know about this one...? This chapter -- just this chapter, as we'll be jumping around the timeline quite a bit -- takes place ten years before FE7 begins, which puts the ages of Legault, Lloyd, and Linus somewhere between fifteen and thirteen.

**Spoilers**. Most of this was written from what I can garner from a few sentences of Legault's support conversations, and then from my own inferences. The man isn't one for infodumps. Now with edits.)

** :: One: Travelers :: **

He couldn't dodge in time - the rider barely missed spearing him with his lance, but the wyvern's green-scaled foot caught him in the face, raking vicious talons diagonally across his left eye. There was scarlet crawling across his vision, but he couldn't feel the white-hot pain he knew should have been there, slicing his consciousness apart.

Someone yelled his name, but he found he had not the will to answer. He could hear a grisly squishing, hacking noise, heard the wyvern keen its deathcry to the winds.

He knew his knees had given way when he felt moist earth beneath his left cheek. There was something warm and wet trickling into his ear -- he could smell blood, _his_ blood, could hear it splattering onto the ground as it dripped slowly off of his face.

The noise consumed him, becoming louder and louder and louder and louder until the sound was everything, earth and sky and sun and moon and stars and red and red and red...

_Plat. Plat. Plat._

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

_Plat. Plat. Plat._ The sound was slowly fading away. Now it was only echoing inside his head, just as the red painted across the insides of his eyelids was receding until it was no longer there at all.

He remembered now. The wyvern had gotten him. His hand flew up to the left side of his face, but his fingers encountered only a crude bandage. It was damp, he realized, damp with blood.

_His_ blood.

"Legault! You're finally awake!"

"So kind of you to notice," he said dryly, using both arms to push himself up. He could only see to his right, but he could see enough to surmise that that the mission had gone without further mishap and that someone had brought him back to camp. He was wrapped in a blanket, and Lloyd was sitting on the other side of the tent, sword resting on top of crossed legs.

"Father's going to give you a lecture as soon as he learns you're up," Lloyd said severely, "Just so you know. You should be more careful. He doesn't want to lose any of us, and you know that."

"Yes, I do." Legault started picking at the edge of the bandage over his eye - it was beginning to itch.

"Don't do that," the other teenager said quickly. "You might -- "

"I can't _see_," retorted Legault acidly.

"But...Uncle Jan said..." Lloyd was chewing on his lower lip, a sure sign that there was something he didn't want to have to say. "When he patched you up, he said that even though you hadn't lost your eye, you...you probably wouldn't be able to see with it," he finished in a rush.

"I _what_?!" He let his hand drop and stared at his companion. "Say that again."

Lloyd stared back as best he could. "You heard me."

"You don't mean it," he said flatly. "You can't. A thief blind in one eye is no thief at all." He studied the way his fingers were smeared with fresh blood, then tried his best not to start tugging at the bandage again.

"Can't you _hear_ yourself?!" Lloyd said hotly. "I know you, Legault! You're not going to give up! You can train twice as hard and you'll _still_ be able to stay with us! You...you can't leave," he finished softly. "You can live with a handicap like this."

The thief's right eye gravitated back towards those of his friend, and he forced a smile. "You're right. I love everyone here too much to ever leave." Ice blue met brown. "I was a fool for thinking so. I promise you I'll never say things like that again. You'll see. Someday, this half-blind thief will be unstoppable."

"I'll hold you to that oath." Lloyd smiled weakly. "You scared me there. Do you think you're strong enough to get up?"

"I don't think a slashed-open face will impede my ability to walk," he mumbled caustically.

"You lost a lot of blood. By the time we got to you, it was everywhere." Lloyd offered him a callused hand. Legault hesitated for a few moments before accepting it, then let his friend pull him up. He looked around the bare tent, adjusting to only being able to see to his right.

"Who killed the wyvern?"

"Uhai." Lloyd shuddered. "It was frightening, really." He made no comment at the slow pace the thief was setting, only continued, "I mean, he's only about half Father's age, but he acts like he's seen everything. Just shot it straight through the neck as coolly as you please, then lets Linus run the rider through. I've never seen anyone so calm on the battlefield."

Legault shook his head, then halted the motion when it made the world around him lurch uncomfortably. "He never stops to doubt his own motives. He believes in what we have dedicated ourselves to."

"Legault!" Both Legault and Lloyd barely had time to turn their heads in the direction of the voice before Linus was standing next to them and clapping the injured thief on the back. "I'm surprised you're up again so quickly." Brendan's second son, though younger than Lloyd and Legault by two years, was already an inch taller than both.

"You expected me to be out for a week because of a scratch?" Legault raised an eyebrow. "I'm not _that_ fragile."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say," Linus said amicably. "But Father was _really_ worried, though he was trying not to show it. He won't be letting you onto a battlefield for weeks."

Legault rolled his eyes but remained silent.

Lloyd sniffed the air. "Uncle Jan's cooking dumplings again, isn't he?"

"No, Uhai is." Linus snorted at the respectively skeptical and shocked expressions on Legault's and Lloyd's respective faces. "Kidding, kidding. I don't know where he found the meat, though."

"Maybe he's been carting it around for three weeks waiting for an opportunity to show off his cooking skills," Legault mumbled.

"Well, knowing Jan, it'll still taste good," said Lloyd, grinning.

"Hurry up," urged Linus. Lloyd shook his head warningly at his brother -- he was on Legault's blind side. Linus exchanged another glance with him, then grinned. "Well, we have to get to Father's tent before Jan scarfs it all himself," he said, a gleam of wicked amusement in his dark eyes. "Father insisted on pitching it over by the edge of the cliff so he can see everything."

Legault made a non-committal "Mm" and continued inching along. But before another moment had passed, Linus had seized him by the waist and lifted him off of the ground as he would a bundle of clothes, slinging him over one shoulder and continuing in the general direction of the tent that the three older members of the Black Fang shared.

Lloyd laughed as Legault pointed out that he wasn't a sack and that it wasn't nice to cart around one's friends as if they were inanimate objects. When that didn't work, he proceeded to kick Linus several times in the stomach. Linus shook his head and ignored the thief's complaints.

It was only a short while later that the three boys stumbled into the firelight, laughing and poking fun at each other. Jan raised an eyebrow at their good moods, while Brendan only chuckled quietly into his beard. Uhai regarded them coolly, hawklike black eyes taking in their every movement.

"Feeling better?" Brendan said quietly, once Linus had deposited Legault between Lloyd and Jan, then seated himself on the ground next to his brother.

"_Much_ better," Legault said, allowing himself a small smile. He absentmindedly reached up to tug down the bandage, but he was stopped by Lloyd's hand on his wrist and five warning looks.

"You can't take it off for another month," Jan said severely.

"But I want to s -- "

"_No_."

"Okay, fine..."

Now that they were all assembled -- all six -- Jan began dishing out the dumplings as the three youngest members of the group watched hungrily. He handed each of them a plate, then Uhai, then Brendan, then took the last himself. There was respectful silence as Brendan said the traditional blessing, and it continued as everyone ate.

They used no silverware, which was too noisy to carry around, but only small wooden bowls that were easy to wash and didn't weigh much. The Black Fang, small and insignificant as it might have been, still lived dangerously. They were based in a small town near Bern's northern border -- Legault had never been there, but Brendan talked about it -- yet their current camp was pitched on the side of a ravine in the southern Bernese mountains. They had completed their mission in Lycia without much difficulty, but a patrol of wyvern riders had caught them and chased them into the mountains.

Such wonderful people, wyvern riders. So fierce, and so..._brutal_. It would be lovely to get some on their side, but they seemed simply too _honorable_ to associate with a group of six assassins (well, five, as Jan didn't like killing much).

Legault found he could only pick at his food, even though he was starving. The thought of swallowing suddenly made him nauseous. All he could think of was the wyvern rider and his beast, the shriek, the soft thump of a blade embedded in flesh. Why was he reliving the events of the battle _now_...? By the time Lloyd and Linus had both cleaned their plates, he was down to simply staring at his now-cold dumplings and trying not to look at them.

"Are you even going to eat that?" said Jan reproachfully. There was concern in his eyes.

Brendan looked over at Legault, brows furrowing. "Eat, boy. You need to keep up your strength. I mean it."

"Yes, commander," Legault whispered, lifting the dumpling to his mouth and taking a hesitant bite. All of a sudden his stomach stopped churning. The dumpling didn't taste half bad cold, so he took another bite. He was now aware of five other pairs of eyes upon him. He swallowed quickly and said, "Why are you all watching me?"

"We're allowed to be concerned, aren't we?" Brendan said humorously. "You're alive, and we want to make sure you stay that way."

"Mm." Legault finished off his first dumpling. "Hey, Jan. My compliments. These are great." Jan beamed. "By the way, how old are they?" Lloyd and Linus snorted.

Jan looked affronted. "For your information, they're _fresh_." He cast a dark glance at his two nephews, who both grinned. "You're welcome to the last one."

"Nah, thanks." He tore the second dumpling in half and studied the contents carefully. "I don't think I can eat much more."

Satisfied, Jan turned back to Brendan and began discussing the route they would take towards their next job.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The three boys walked slowly back to their tent in silence. Legault was half-asleep by the time Linus pushed aside the flap and let the other two go in first. Lloyd immediately burrowed into his bedroll, yawning sleepily. Legault wrapped his blankets securely around himself, watching through slitted eyes as Linus shut the tent flap and lay down on Lloyd's other side.

It suddenly occurred to Legault that when he took the bandage off, he'd have a scar that matched Brendan's. Odd, but he'd never considered that Brendan might also be half-blind...the man missed nothing. He decided that he'd ask him in the morning.

Within minutes, all were sound asleep.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Legault woke up in the middle of the night, clutching at his other eye. He realized with a sigh of relief that he could see and it was still there. Lloyd and Linus were both asleep to his right, two large, silent lumps in the darkness.

He had had a dream -- a nightmare. The wyvern patrol had found them again. Brendan was dead. Jan was dead. Uhai was dead. Lloyd and Linus were dead. The same thing had happened again, but this time it was his right eye and there was no one to save him.

He sat up, trying to get his breath back. Stumbling to his feet, he slipped through the tent flap and back outside. It was cold up here in the mountains, very cold. He was cold and he was half-blind. There was silence from Brendan's tent up ahead -- the other three slept light, so no sentry was ever needed. No wyverns flew the skies above the mountains, yet he was still stricken by a feeling of unease.

He shivered uncontrollably as the sounds of the wyvern's death echoed in his ears.

_Plat_. _Plat_. _Plat_.

There it was again. The sound of blood falling to the ground.

_Plat_. _Plat_. _Plat_.

Louder, ringing in his ears. Stop... Stop it.

_Plat_. _Plat_. _Plat_.

He shut his eyes tightly, willing the noise away.

_Plat_.

Legault finally did the smart thing and passed out.


End file.
